Iranian Red Crescent asks the ICC to investigate a U.S. strike on a wedding in Sirik

The Iranian Red Crescent Society has written to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court asking for an investigation of a U.S. strike that, Iranian officials say, hit a wedding in Kuhestak, Sirik County, on the night of 1 September. Five people are now listed as dead. Sixty-seven others were wounded, the Red Crescent said. Most of the injured were women and children.

The Hormozgan governor office named four of the dead on 2 September: Amir Ali Karimi, four; Mohammad Malahi, 16; Kolsoum Malahi, 43; and Zarkhatoun Taheri, 43. State television said on 3 September that a fifth person, a 22-year-old woman, had died in hospital. The New York Times, citing the Red Crescent and a local witness, identified a six-year-old boy at the same gathering as Amir-Mohammad Karimi and reported that he had gone ahead of his mother with his 14-year-old sister Kiana.

Funerals were held on the afternoon of 3 September outside the village. Mourners carried flag-draped coffins under palm fronds. Iran then announced missile and drone fire at a U.S. base in Kuwait.

What each side has put on paper

Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei called the strike a war crime. The Red Crescent letter said the site was a family wedding, that civilians were present, and that the facts raise questions under international humanitarian law that need an independent inquiry. The society also released photographs of a house with walls and windows blown out and of children in hospital.

U.S. Central Command said it was aware of the Iranian reports and that U.S. forces never target civilians. CENTCOM described the night raids as strikes on IRGC positions after attacks on shipping and on U.S. forces. It has not published a specific target package for Kuhestak.

The New York Times said a weapons specialist and its own visual analysis placed the munition in the American raids that night. That is not a court finding. It is the most detailed open-source account in English so far.

Why a wedding house sits on this coast

Sirik County faces the Strait of Hormuz. Weddings in the small towns there are often held at home. The Malahi family gathering followed that custom. Dozens of guests had already arrived, according to local accounts, when the strike came at about 9:30 p.m. A telecommunications tower and a residential building were also hit in the same series of raids, Iranian officials said.

The ICC path is narrow. The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute. Iran has its own complicated history with the court. A letter from a national Red Crescent society does not open a case by itself. It puts a civilian-casualty file in front of an office that can, if it chooses, ask for more.

For families in Kuhestak the next facts are local: burial, hospital bills, and whether the remaining wounded survive. For the wider war the next facts are operational: whether the Kuwait fire draws a further American night of raids, and whether any future CENTCOM statement names the house.